The Tenth Month

4D

I was sitting at a table, reading quietly, when the chair
opposite me moved. I looked at it, wondering if I was seeing things. I wasn’t:
it moved again, a little further along. Then it moved backwards. Then forwards.
Then backwards again. The chair was doing a waltz. I looked under the table...Zane
was sitting next to the chair, his arms grasping the legs, intently focussed on
sliding it along the floor.

Once Zane became mobile, he had taken it upon himself to
make everything else move about as well. His life had gone 4-dimensional. Not long ago he
was a static body watching the world orbit him from a single perspective. Crawling
has enabled him to move around and look at all planetary objects from other
interesting angles, to see what they looked like from the back, the sides and
from underneath. What’s more, he can now create his own angles, moving whatever
furniture he can, enjoying the power to rearrange the world in his own way. The
result is usually a big, but happy, mess.

Elvis

Zane can now stand. When he is in the vicinity of any solid
object that can support his weight, he uses it to hoist himself up and
straighten his legs. He loves it: standing gives him some time away from
ultra-ground level and let him be more “adult”. The interesting thing is, once
he has attained his lofty height, he doesn’t immediately enjoy the new
panoramic views available to him; the first thing he does is to look back down
at his feet. Perhaps he gets a new perspective of his feet with them being a
further away, or is impressed that something other than his little dimply butt
is supporting his weight.

Once he is done enjoying the aerial views of his feet and
legs, he likes to move them. However, he doesn’t indulge in any of that walking
business. Oh, no. He does Elvis. Zane shifts his weight a little to one leg,
pivots the other outwards, and rocks his hips and free legs about in a
miniature impersonation of The King. A-huh-huh.

Setting boundaries

Zane has begun to understand the meaning of “no”. When he is
doing something he shouldn’t be, such as trying to eat a shoe or a small animal, a stern “NO!” checks his progress, making him look up
in mild shock that such harsh words are being directed at him. And it generally works so far; he tends to stay
away from things he knows he shouldn’t touch. I say generally: on occasion, he just thinks we’re not serious. Our firm
warning will make him stop what he is doing, look at us for some seconds, and
then he’ll laugh, a laugh that says: “Hehehe,
you’re just kidding, right? I really can give this table cloth a good yank,
can’t I?”

He is not yet a year old, yet sometimes his eyes betray the
maturity of many years. At play Zane glows with childish joy, his face
enraptured at throwing things about or making noise with clattering toys. But
then, sometimes he doesn’t; during some childish diversions he just looks
serious and unimpressed. For example, I was once playing a jolly fun game with
him - bouncing a balloon on his head - and he was most unenthusiastic. He was
unmoved, looking at me sideways, unflinchingly, as though I were a petulant
child. The game was not quite so enjoyable to me after that.

A new storage concept

We adults are far too organised. We all have
numerous pieces of furniture - drawers, shelves, tables, cupboards – to orderly
store all of our things. Zane has helped me see the light: put everything on the
floor! Every time Zane finds a set of drawers, he opens the ones he can reach
and pulls out each item in the drawer one-by-one and deposits them on the
floor. Coffee tables? A waste of space. They are the perfect height for Zane to
practice his standing and walking; he pulls himself up to methodically grab
each article – whether it be a coaster, a magazine, or a plate – to unceremoniously
drag it onto the floor, barely giving them a second glance once they’ve reached
their new resting place. Why have cupboards when your saucepans can be accessed
from the ground? And shelves: take all those books off them so you can view the
walls in their entirety. Why have any furniture at all? Zane Minimalism:
maximise the use of your floor space!